Knowing how to ban people in Twitch chat can come in handy when you’re streaming content. Unfortunately, some of the people viewing your Twitch streams may not intend to be courteous and well-behaved.
As the video streaming landscape has experienced exponential growth over the last decade, the increased global reach of such content has contributed to more “bad apples”. These people simply decide to act unruly, harm others with hurtful comments as well as troll other viewers which can negatively impact the Twitch experience.
In this article, we’ll give you the lowdown on how you can temporarily or permanently ban malicious users from your Twitch stream. Keeping chats within your community circle free of harassment is a great initiative to show your community that you don’t welcome or tolerate people who intend to abuse other viewers.
For more helpful Twitch tutorials, it’s well worth checking out our detailed guide on how to fix the issue of Twitch streams not loading, or our instructional post outlining how to fix the Twitch app when it’s not working on a mobile device.
How to ban people in Twitch chat
As a streamer, you have the power to ban users from your Twitch chat room in the following ways:
1. Entering the chat command /ban {USERNAME} in the chat box
The first step is to open the stream window and click on the chat’s rectangular message box. Once you’ve completed that, type ‘/ban’ within the chat box, followed by the username of the viewer that you want to permanently restrict access. When you’ve finished typing in that username, simply press enter on your keyboard to implement the ban.
2. Clicking the block button on the user badge appearing on the person’s username
With this method, you need to click on the username of the offending viewer in the chat, as doing so opens up their profile card. From there, click on the three vertical dots displayed underneath their ‘Badges’ section. A small dropdown menu will then prompt you to block or report the user, which is where you’ll go with the first option in order to hide that user and all their previous messages in the chat.
Once you’ve completed either of the aforementioned methods, the banned viewer in question won’t be able to interact with you once they’ve been restricted. They also won’t appear in your chatter’s list, nor can they view or participate in the Twitch chat for your live stream.
Ultimately, any form of user harassment isn’t permitted on the Twitch streaming platform, and you can take the necessary ban action to protect both yourself as a streamer and other viewers.